Friday, 4 September 2015

Sketches and Repeated Stories

A little while back I spent a weekend
sorting out my old room at home. It was an intensely satisfying (if arduous)
process – books being moved from one shelf to another, magazines stacked into
boxes, arts materials carefully arranged to be accessible. I tidied out a
suitcase’s worth of clippings and images ripped from magazines, and ordered all
my notebooks. It was wonderful.

In the midst of this sifting and shifting,
I found something lodged under a pile of vintage Vogues – a large, slightly
tatty notebook. It was spiral bound with a faded brown cover. Inside it were
sketches - some very special sketches, in fact, that I’d forgotten about. This
notebook had belonged to my Great-Aunt Eva (my paternal grandma’s sister), and
the drawings inside – all elegant lines and gorgeous designs – had been done in
Dublin when she was about 18. The previous year she had fled Czechoslovakia (as
it then was) with the rest of her family – the Communist coup d’etat meaning
that it was no longer safe for my great-grandfather to remain in the country; his
life was in danger. They skied over the border disguised as tourists. Their
escape was not a choice. It was a necessity.

Ireland was one of the countries that, thankfully, would
take them in. They arrived there with very little (having to share my grandma’s
school knickers between all three women, for example) but were thrifty and
ingenious and quickly established a social life. Eva enrolled on a design
course at one of the design houses, which is where these sketches were
produced, and she also modeled for them. It seemed like, despite the trauma of
losing a home, country, community, business and all personal belongings in one
fell swoop, this family had a chance to establish a new life for themselves. There
was possibility. Then Eva was diagnosed with leukemia. She was afforded passage
into England to be treated at the Essex Children’s Hospital, but nothing could
be done. She died the following year, aged 19 – younger than I am now.

These sketches are one of very few
belongings of hers that have been passed down to me. These, and a set of rings
– one hers, and one my grandma’s – which are small, gold bows (pictured below).
I find it entirely extraordinary that this young woman, a woman I never met, still
lives on in the hand-drawn, inked outlines of dresses and coats and underwear
that now sit in my room. They’re bloody great designs too.

I have been thinking a lot about her, and
my grandma, and their family in recent weeks. They were political refugees –
the kinds of people that the Daily Mail would be likely to froth at the mouth
over today (especially because, shock horror, they were foreigners that came
over to this country and used our precious health services for their dying
daughter!!) The kinds of people who, if it happened to them now, might also face
vitriol from many people - because apparently if you are desperate enough to
leave your home country and all you hold dear, to face extreme danger in the
escape, to crave the standard of safety and personal security that we take as
prerequisite, then you are a ‘parasite’ or a ‘scrounger’ or a ‘swarm.’ Not a
human being searching to regain your sense of humanity or to secure the safety
of your family. Not an individual who has seen traumatizing, terrifying things.
No – a ‘pest’, something dehumanized and reduced to the mass of your body and
the space you take up.

Of course what I’m referring to here is the
current ongoing refugee crisis, partly centered in Calais but also spread
across the rest of Europe and beyond. Much like a growing number of publications, I refuse to call it a migrant crisis. People do not cheerfully just
decide to up sticks and leave a country for better opportunities elsewhere if
that country is torn apart by war. Ongoing events in various countries have led
to the biggest movement of people since WWII. That in itself is appalling. You
know what else is appalling? The lack of empathy in so many quarters – not
least the bile-filled tabloids who have the audacity to do an about-turn only
at the point where there are (entirely devastating) pictures of a dead child to
publish.

As various people have pointed out though,
empathy is easy on an individual basis. Case in point - Cecil the Lion got
waaaaay more sympathy and outpouring of anger than the many, many black men and
women who have been killed by the police in America this year. How messed up
and back to front is that? It’s the same principle with the refugee crisis.
It’s easy to feel the galling punch of a single individual’s loss and fear.
Harder to extend that to thousands upon thousands of losses and fears. That was
why it was easy to talk about my Great-Aunt Eva just now. Her story is
personal. I know enough details to flesh it out and turn it into a compelling
story. There is a dramatic narrative arc, a singular tragedy, a set of events
both extraordinary and devastating in the retelling. But they were just one
family who fled their country during the 1940s. Countless others did too – all
with their own heritages and experiences and perspectives as well. All equally valid. Same as today.

Right now though, we need to be extending
that empathy far and wide. Despite the often overwhelming feelings that
currently hit on opening a newspaper or checking Twitter, there are lots of
practical ways we can help. This list from The Independent is a brilliant place to start, and kind of covers everything from great charities to grassroots groups asking for donations and goods they will be taking to Calais and elsewhere. Also have a read of this piece in The Pool talking about what Dawn O'Porter has been doing (and how you can get involved), sign this petition and this one, and then have a read of this poem by Warsan Shire. As she says there, in a line now picked up by many different news outlets, 'you have to understand/ that no one puts their children in a boat/ unless the water is safer than the land.'

(My grandma and her sister's rings - Eva's was the one with the extra stones edged along each side of the bow)

7 comments

Thank you for sharing her illustrations and story with us. I can see how you can connect her life story and the current crisis that is taking place. The world is such a cruel place and I wonder will that ever change.

These sketches are such a wonderful keepsake from your Great Aunt. I am often saddened by what has been happening in the world, lack of empathy for certain groups and devastation is outrageous to say the least. I often think about my grandmother and great grandparents who left their home country out of survival, having to start over. But, they never lost their sense of culture, even being in a foreign land. Those rings are gorgeous! x

I find your comment about refusing to use the word migrant intersting, just because I haven't heard this stance previously. It's true though- the semantics of the news is always something interesting to pick apart, and to consider how it shapes our ways of thinking.

Then again I have, as a half-dutch girl, always been angered at hatred towards migrants and refugees. I don't need a story of suffering to accept that a person should be free to move across borders. Migrant or refugee, desperate or not, freedom of movement seems a basic right to me. I don't want to have a mindset that only expresses empathy for the 'victim', that only wants to accept the refugee (vs the migrant) into the UK. It's the kind of distinction that UKIP (and others) seem to peddle- they only want to accept the 'truly persecuted' or the law abiding, skilled legal 'good' migrant.

Thanks for the practical links- I've been searching, with little success, for ways to help the situation. And I'm pleased you expressed that sense of overwhelming-ness that I also feel when watching the news.